Hate Mail
by chiisana-ai
Summary: Alternative version of my other fic Love Letter; Spencer Reid and Aida Ivanova have to cooperate with each other when the BAU travels to Hawaii to investigate a series of brutal murders, but their past makes things complicated and somewhat unpleasant at times. Reid x OC, foul-mouthed language shall be flying around at times. You have been warned.
1. Chapter 1

"What was that about in the conference room?" Morgan asked as he and Reid drove to the M.E.'s office. Reid sat in silence for a long moment, which bothered Morgan to no end. "Come on, Kid; what's up?"

"It isn't relevant to our job, so I'd rather not talk about it, thanks." Reid replied, his voice going up in pitch in the middle of the sentence.

"I've never seen you that pissed before, what did she do to you?"

"In retrospect, that was probably a really stupid and horrible thing for me to do, but it's not like she's completely innocent." Reid was agitated, and he began twiddling his thumbs. "I'm not talking about it, though." He added stubbornly.

Morgan sighed and rolled his eyes before turning into the parking lot at the M.E.'s office.

Back at the field office, JJ was working with Aida and Rossi to coordinate media and interviews with victims' families.

"Would you mind if I asked to come along on one of your interviews?" Rossi asked Aida after she got off the phone with one of the victims' mothers.

"Not at all! Be my guest." She said, smiling and jotting a few notes down on her notepad; she was writing in Japanese, so no one else could read it. "If you'd like, we can leave now; Kazuko said we could come over whenever we wanted."

"Alright, sounds good to me." Rossi and JJ exchanged a look as Aida got up and headed to the door.

As they left the office, Reid and Morgan came back in, and Aida bumped in to Reid on accident.

"Shit, sorry!" She said, looking over her shoulder and dashing to the elevator.

"It's okay…?" Reid looked surprised by how skittish she seemed, but he figured she was probably still shaken up by the incident in the conference room. "Are you going with her?" Reid asked Rossi.

"Yes, yes I am." Rossi replied, "Why?"

"Can you let her know that I feel bad about earlier and that I'm sorry?" Reid put his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth a bit.

"As much as I'd like to help you out, Reid, I think you should tell her yourself." Rossi pat his shoulder and then went off to catch the elevator down with Aida, who had held the door open for him.

Reid looked to Morgan, who gave him a look that practically screamed _you know we're right_, and then walked back into the office.


	2. Chapter 2

After speaking with Kazuko Hirakawa, the mother of the second victim, Rossi and Aida returned to the field office to share what they learned with the rest of the team and a few of Aida's subordinate agents in the conference room. She brought four agents with her, all but one were women, and they were all pretty young.

"Alright, my kiddos, these are the agents of the BAU; SSAs Aaron Hotchner, David Rossi, Derek Morgan, Jennifer _JJ_ Jareau, and Dr. Spencer Reid." Aida said, gesturing to each of them as she named them off, "Their technical analyst Penelope Garcia is in our computer lab right now with Karen, but I'm sure you'll probably see her around if she ever emerges from the tech den." She added.

"Well, uh, it's really nice to meet you all!" A short, thin little Asian woman said, smiling at the team, "I'm Hana Kurokawa, and these are Elle Ajimine, Kento Sugita, Amanda Vallarta, and Helen Kirk; we're Aida's go-to for anything serious, be it white collar or… Well, our first serial killer in the state." Hana seemed like she wasn't used to introducing others, but she seemed slightly more confident once Aida gave her a slight nod of approval.

"So, Rossi said there's something you thought you should share with us?" Hotch said to Aida; she nodded.

"Yeah… We talked to Kanako Hirakawa's mother, Kazuko, and she said that Kanako went out with some friends, she was picked up around seven-thirty the night she was murdered, and she was supposed to be home around two in the morning, according to her mom, but she never showed so she called the cops."

"That's not anything we didn't already know." Reid said, though he didn't mean for it to sound as rude as it did.

"Yes, I know." Aida smiled a little at him, "Rossi, would you like to tell everyone what else happened?"

"While she was talking to Kazuko, Kazuko said she received a call from a woman whose voice sounded familiar but that she couldn't place shortly before the time she called the police, saying that Kanako was fine and she'd be coming home as scheduled." Rossi said, looking over everyone in the room, "She also added that the woman giggled a _creepy_ giggle before hanging up."

"If you can have Garcia jump right on getting the phone records, I'd appreciate it." Aida said. She glanced over at the clock on the wall, "Jeesh, it's already midnight… You guys can go home, I'll call you in if anything happens, but if I don't call, just come in at eight." She was addressing her team, and then she turned her attention to the BAU, "Do you guys have a hotel you're staying in?"

"We won't go home until Garcia gets the phone records, which shouldn't take her long." Hotch said as Morgan dialed her number. "But for tonight, we don't; apparently it is impossible to get a decent hotel room in the summer here."

"Yup, welcome to my island!" Aida said, smiling a little. "I've got a house about half an hour away from here, it's got an obscene amount of rooms, plenty for you all to have your own rooms, and there's everything you could ever need… Unless you want to sleep in the bunks here at the office, but those are pretty horrible."

"If you don't mind, we'd greatly appreciate staying at your house." JJ said.

Reid's face clearly showed that he was not up for the overnighter at Aida's house, but no one paid any attention to him.


	3. Chapter 3

Two black SUVs pulled into Aida's driveway, and everyone piled out a minute later. Aida checked the mail, and it looked like she had seen something she didn't want anyone to see, something that even she didn't want to see. This automatically piqued the team's interest as she slammed the mailbox closed and again and unlocked the door.

"So, uh, I guess I'll show you guys around really quickly… I'll leave it up to you guys to pick your rooms and stuff once we're done." Aida said, pushing open the door.

After giving the team a brief tour of the house, everyone settled in to their rooms; it was just Spencer's luck that he happened to get stuck with the room adjoined with Aida's, but since the connecting door was locked, it was less of a problem.

He was still upset, and lying in a bed at her house gave him plenty of time to think about how much he resented her, but also to reflect on how childish it was. He was going to have to make an effort to not be childish, but he wasn't sure how exactly to go about doing it.

Around 5:00am, Spencer woke up to the smell of food being cooked downstairs, and it was enough to get him to venture out of the bedroom, which he had barricaded himself in, to figure out what was happening in the kitchen.

He walked slowly down the stairs, trying not to make the floor creak, but it did it anyway, and he heard Aida singing while she cooked; he could smell bacon, eggs, toast, and some other things he couldn't quite place despite having smelled them many times before.

He turned into the kitchen and she was practically dancing around the kitchen, grabbing utensils and spices and cooking food.

"Good morning, Spencer." She said, flipping some pancakes and turning to face him. "If you want, you can have some now… There's also some coffee."

"I'm trying to drink more tea, actually." He replied.

She grinned, "Good, tea is good." She walked past him and over to one of the pantries and pulled the door open, "Take however much of whatever you want, Spencer; though, it might take you a second to figure out just what it is you want."

He walked up behind her and looked at the pantry, which was filled with nothing but hundreds, if not a thousand, different kinds of tea.

"Holy shit." He said, letting out a shocked chuckle, "When did you become a tea hoarder?"

"Well, you know, I'm Asian… Comes with the territory." She ducked past him, "So, food?"

"Are you making those rice balls still?"

"Not right now, but I can in about five minutes." She walked back to the stove and put the bacon and the pancakes on their respective plates and cracked a couple of eggs over another pan. "Just the onigiri?"

"Can you… Can you put the bacon inside it like you did back when we were—"

"Yep!" She seemed like she felt that what he was about to say was like a stab to the chest. The word came out more as a yelp than the cheerful reply it was intended to be, and she knew that he could tell.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to—"

"I know, it's fine." She looked over at him and smiled a small, fake smile. "You know, I'm sorry that I'm going to say this, but I'm really surprised you're not still locked in the room stewing over how much you hate me."

"To be perfectly honest with you, I am, too." He grabbed a box out of the pantry and pulled a bag out of it. "Mugs?"

"The cabinet directly above the pantry."

"How do you even reach that?" He asked, getting on his tip toes to open the door. "I'm six-one and I have to really stretch to even reach the handle."

"I usually don't drink anything but water… The tea is there for the people I never have over that might like tea." She put the egg on a small plate and then went to the rice cooker. "Small, medium, or large?"

"You already know the answer to that." He replied, pouring hot water out of the dispenser on the counter into his mug.

"Yeah, I know…" She muttered, grabbing salt and filling a small bowl with water. "If you want some later, I can make some for lunch… You didn't eat anything yesterday, and I was a little worried…"

"I mean, if you have enough rice for that, I guess I'd like that. And why are you still worried about me? The last time we talked, you told me you wanted nothing to do with me."

"I lied, and I _know_ you know that." She shot him a deadly glare before returning her attention to the rice ball she was creating.

She chopped a couple slices of bacon up and grabbed dried seaweed out of the cabinet next to the stove, and she packed the bacon inside the rice before wrapping it in the seaweed.

"What was the point, then? If you just lied to me about everything."

"I didn't lie about everything, I lied about not loving you and never wanting to see you again." She put the large onigiri on a plate and put it on the counter in front of him, "I know I told you to hate me, but I didn't think you'd go so far as to convince yourself that literally every second we spent together wasn't genuinely enjoyable for me."

"Enjoyable? What does _that_ mean?"

"You're such a prick, Spencer." She had started to make another onigiri. "You know exactly what that meant, and I don't have to explain it. If you really wanted to argue with me, you could have just abandoned your slight kindness from ten minutes ago before you even tried. This passive-aggressive bullshit needs to stop."

"_I'm_ passive-aggressive?"

"You know what, forget it… I'm sorry…" She took a short, staggered breath and bit her lip; she took a moment to try and maintain her composure and to keep herself from crying, but it didn't help.

She continued to make onigiri until there was no more rice left in the cooker, and she started cooking more bacon after she had finished the last one; she and Spencer said nothing to each other for the rest of the day, even at work.


	4. Chapter 4

The team spent more nights at Aida's house, which no one seemed to mind because it was almost exactly like being in a hotel except it cost them nothing _and_ some of the views were better. Aida treated everyone as if it was her personable responsibility to make sure all of them were in the best shape possible for the work ahead of them, making them breakfast every day and even doing laundry.

It became Aida and Spencer's morning routine to talk while she made breakfast for everyone and made his lunch; there was always something different for breakfast, but his lunch always included the onigiri he had always been helpless to resist.

On the fourth day of them staying at Aida's house, Spencer woke up before she did— which was horrible because it was 4:00am, but he figured it might be a good opportunity to take a walk around the block in the coolness of the early morning on a mountainside.

When he got back to the house, Aida was on the couch drinking a cup of tea and looking out the bay window.

"Hey."

"Hi…" Aida looked over at him and smiled a little, "Have a nice walk?"

"Yes, actually." He replied, putting his hands in his pockets. "How long have you been up?"

"Well, I heard you going out the front door, so probably twenty minutes or thereabout." She took a sip of her tea, "You hungry?"

"Not really… You checked the mail the night we got here and haven't checked it since; what was it that made you start avoiding the mailbox?"

She seemed a bit surprised by the change in subject, but she got up and motioned for him to follow her.

They went into her room and she pulled an envelope out of the drawer. She handed it to him and he looked over it; it had no return address and the label was handwritten. The handwriting looked familiar to him, though he couldn't quite place it.

"You haven't opened it?"

"I don't know if I want to."

"Do you think it might have something to do with the case we're working on?"

"Maybe. I don't know." She sighed, "I wanted to ask you about it, but since we had gone back to not speaking…"

"You could have said something."

"Sorry…"

"Why are you apologizing?" He grabbed a pair of gloves out of a box on her desk and tore open the envelope. "I guess me being horribly standoffish doesn't help anything, but if you wanted me to take a look at it, you could have just asked."

"Well, I wasn't sure what to do with it, since I hadn't opened it." She replied as he looked into the envelope; there were pictures printed on photo paper, four DVDs in clear cases, and four sheets of folder paper stapled together.

"That's odd…" He said, putting the pictures down on the desk and pulling the four paged letter out of the envelope. "You said the UnSub wasn't leaving notes at the crime scenes, right? No contact made to the local police departments or your office."

"Not a peep. Bodies just keep piling up." She said, looking over his shoulder at the stuff on her desk.

"I think we just got their press packet."

With that, he put all the pictures and the stapled together letters inside of the envelope again and went to wake up the rest of his team.


	5. Chapter 5

The teams were sitting at the table in the conference room of the Honolulu Field Office with the contents of the envelope on the table, besides the DVDs which had been taken to Garcia; it was 5:30am.

"How many people know your address?" Hotch asked Aida.

"We don't even know where she lives, and we don't have access to that information, either." Hana said, sighing.

"I don't know… I suppose maybe three or four people, besides you guys and myself, might know it." Aida looked like she had been zoned out and panicking.

"Does your mom live here, too?" Reid asked.

"No, but she was in town for business until a few days ago." She replied, picking at her cuticles.

She and Reid looked at each other and something just clicked.

"Garcia, can you check hotel reservations under the name Hiroko Ivanova or Hiroko Nagata within five miles of the victim's homes or places of work and in the last month?"

Garcia began typing away and pulled up four separate reservations; two under each name.

"There's four… One at the Sheraton Waikiki for two days ago which is continuing until next Thursday, one at the Royal Hawaiian from two weeks ago for a week, another one at the Moana Surf Rider from last week for three days, and one at the Ala Moana hotel for three weeks ago and the stay was a week long." She looked over.

"Aida." Reid said, meeting her gaze again.

"I know." She bit her lip and looked at him for a while. "Spencer, I'm going to let you decide if you want to come on this arrest or not, but I would strongly advise, as your friend, that you don't come."

"Yeah, sounds like a good idea." He said, looking to the team.

"We need you out in the field, Reid." Hotch said.

"Spencer can sit this one out." Aida said, getting in between the two men. "I don't want to interfere with your team and how you work, Hotch, but there is a lot you don't know about our UnSub, and I don't want to have anything happening to Spencer and have to carry that weight for the rest of my life, even if it's only something minor."

Hotch looked passed her and at Reid, who gave him a look that said he wasn't going to win that and nodded.

"What do you think is going to happen?" Rossi asked.

"As much as I'd love to explain right now, our priority is bringing the UnSub into custody." Aida looked over her shoulder at Reid, "BunBun, don't leave the building or even this floor until we get back and have my mom in interrogation."

Everyone else seemed halfway between amused and confused by what she had addressed him as and his reaction.

"Yup, not going anywhere." He replied, giving her a closed lip smile and sitting down next to Garcia to help her weed through all the information about Hiroko.

"Ishikawa-san, shouldn't we go now?" Kento asked, looking concerned.

"Call the hotel and let them know that they're not to let anyone in or out of the hotel, I want them to confirm that my mother is in the hotel before we get there. If she isn't, we'll have to find her, but if she is—"

"A hit on her credit card says she bought some stuff from a convenience store inside the hotel about a minute ago." Garcia said.

"Well, never mind; no alarms, she'll bolt if she hears them, and have officers from the Waikiki department meet us."

"I'd suggest calling the hotel and shutting down elevator service to her floor until we get there, and evacuating everyone else off the floor if they can manage."

"Garcia, what room is she staying in?" Aida asked, looking over at her.

"She is staying in the presidential suite, and there are twelve other rooms on the floor… They're all empty."

"Right… Okay, get them to stop the elevators from going to that floor until we get there, because I am _not_ walking up forty something floors, and shut the emergency exits on that floor as well."


	6. Chapter 6

"She looked like she was really scared when she stepped between you and Hotch before they left." Garcia said, continuing to go through dozens of documents that related to Hiroko Nagata.

"That's because she was." Reid replied, flipping through papers she had printed out for him, "I'm surprised someone as off as Hiroko was able to hold down a high paying job… When I knew her, she was a stay at home mom with no formal education."

"Well, she's got two PhDs now and she's the CEO of two companies…"

"Yeah, I gathered." He looked over a page of her bank records, "She's frugal except for when it comes to travel; when she travels, she spends a ton of money on her accommodations… Can you check to see the last time Aida and her mother were in the same town?"

"Yeah, I'll get right on it…" Garcia sighed, clacking away at her keyboard. "The last time they were in the same town or had any contact, documented contact was… Fourteen years ago."

"What was the date?"

Garcia looked surprised by the question, "October twelfth, nineteen ninety nine."

"Nothing at all after that?"

"If they did, it's not anywhere on record."

"Alright, thanks." Reid stood up and left the office; he saw Hana sitting at her desk looking stressed out. "Hey, you're kind of Aida's right hand woman, right?"

"Y-Yes, Dr. Reid." Hana said, looking up at him, "Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Does she ever talk about her mother?"

"Not until you and your team arrived in town."

"Did she ever talk about me before then?"

"A lot…" Hana looked as if she felt guilty for admitting it, "When she found out you were coming here, she began to panic, and she went on a rant about how she would have to sit this case out because you would be angry with her just for existing, and then she went on to say how it was her mother's fault you were angry with her and that she felt horrible about it."

"Okay, thanks… Anything in particular that struck you as odd?"

"Well, she did say a few times in passing that she loved you, and as she left she told me to make sure you were okay and to protect you as if I loved you, too, if anything happened."

"Any idea what she meant by that?"

"I'm assuming it means to value your life above my own and do anything necessary to preserve your life with no regard for my own." She replied, glancing to her cell phone.

"Are you waiting for something?"

"Aida said she'd call when they arrested her mother… It's been twenty minutes, it's a ten minute drive, the elevator lift doesn't take ten minutes to get to the top floor, and the takedown usually takes a few minutes… She should have called by now, so I'm getting anxious."

"Do you mind if I sit out here with you?"

"I'd welcome that; no one else is here, so it's agonizing to wait for the call."

"I know."

Reid smiled a reassuring but small smile at her, and they began to chat about other things to keep their mind off Aida and the other agents' whereabouts and doings.

Meanwhile at the hotel, Aida was trying to talk Hiroko down; she had a gun aimed at Aida, and she was shouting at her in Japanese.

"Mom, put the gun down." Aida said, not moving her gun, "I've got seven other agents outside your door, do you really want to shoot me right now? If you shoot me, I guarantee they will come through that door and shoot you."

"You were always ungrateful, you never appreciated me!"

"Whoa, what?" Aida laughed, "Mom, what have you ever done for any of us? You told me you would murder Spencer if I wanted to stay with him, and you forced me to marry an abusive man, and now you've killed innocent people because they looked like me!"

"Spencer was no good for you, he would have ruined our reputation!"

"Spencer is an amazing man, and you just couldn't stand that I was so happy with him."

"He was awkward and didn't know how to handle you."

"Oh, shut up! You have no idea what my relationship with him was like! He was an amazing boyfriend, he would have been my husband if it hadn't been for you. Spencer loved me, unlike Daisuke, and he was so, _so_ smart. He was my everything, and you ruined that; what reason would I ever have to be grateful to you?"

"You would have fallen out of love with him."

"No, I wouldn't have. I still love him, it's been years and I still do." Aida sighed, "Put your gun down, I'll put mine down, and we can get out of here without making a mess."

"Everything is always a mess with you!"

Hiroko tossed her gun aside and walked to Aida, hands up… But as she reached her, she attacked her, managing to kick Aida's gun across the room while she assaulted her.

Aida pulled Hiroko's hair and bit her arm, then threw her off to the side. Hiroko got up and charged Aida, knocking her to the ground and punching her as hard as she could; Aida head-butted her and kneed her in the stomach, which made her roll onto her back next to her. Aida flipped her over and cuffed her.

"I've got her!"

Morgan came in and grabbed Hiroko while JJ took Aida out of the room and got in an elevator to head downstairs.


	7. Chapter 7

They arrived back at the field office, and Aida was one of the last ones through the door; she refused to be checked by the paramedics downstairs, still bloodied up as she walked through the door.

"She's back!" Hana said, pointing towards the entrance to the office and beaming. Reid looked over and saw her catching some blood from her nose, and he felt an overwhelming sense of relief as he went over to her with a couple of tissues.

"You could have at least cleaned up, you know." He said, handing the tissues to her.

"Thanks, BunBun." She smiled a little and tilted her head back, "I'm really glad you weren't there."

"What happened?" He asked, looking over the scrapes and broken skin on her face and arms.

"Mom beat the shit out of me, but I got her back pretty good considering she's in interrogation right now." She giggled and then let out a groan of pain, "Ugh, Hana! Get me some ibuprofen, please."

"Yes, Ma'am!" Hana laughed and went to the break room to get the medicine.

"She's really fond of you." Reid said.

"Yeah… I'm pretty fond of her, too." Aida smiled. "There's something I want you to do for me, BunBun."

"Do you have to keep calling me that in front of people we work with?" He was embarrassed, but it wasn't as if he didn't like being called by that ancient nickname she had given him.

"If you want me to stop, I will." She replied, walking over to Hana's desk and sitting down. "So, Dr. Spencer Reid, I need to ask a favor of you."

"Anything." His reply was so rapid that it surprised both of them.

"Did you hit your head while I was out?" She asked, giving him a funny look; he shook his head, "Anyway, I'm sure your team will want to get right on the interrogation, but do tell them that, if she doesn't say anything, we should hold a meeting… I've got a plan, and I know it'll work, and I need your help to see it through."

"Only if they can't get anything out of her, right?"

"Yep."

"Alright, I'll let them know." He got up and went to find one of the team to tell them.

Several hours passed and they got nothing out of Hiroko; anything she had said in the hotel room was irrelevant because no one could vouch for the validity of Aida's account because the conversation had taken place in private and in a foreign language. No one else had heard it, so they couldn't use her confession. She didn't ask for water, or even a phone call, not a single word fell from her lips the first four hours she was in custody.

The team was called into Aida's office for a quick meeting.

"What's your plan?" Hotch asked.

"She doesn't know Spencer is here, and that will work to our advantage. When I said that Spencer needed to stay here, it was more out of fear for his safety than anything else, but I knew mom had no idea he was here and that if she continued to be oblivious that it could be helpful."

"Hiroko isn't the type to talk; Aida once told me it's kind of a cultural thing and that her mother also isn't the type to incriminate or even exonerate herself, so Aida and I were talking and she thinks it would be enough of a surprise for me to go in there alone and try to talk to Hiroko."

"If that doesn't work, I'll join him." Aida smiled a little, "Our methods will probably be a little unorthodox, but I promise that'll probably get something out of mom if Spencer alone can't get anything out of her."

"The confession needs to be in English." Morgan cut in, trying to read their body language.

"If Spencer is in the room, she'll be speaking English. She speaks Japanese when it's just the two of us, so that won't be a problem."

"What do you mean by _unorthodox_?" Rossi asked.

"Long story short, Spencer and I were a couple a long time ago, and she's the reason we aren't now; acting like we were again will make her go ballistic. It's a backup plan in case she doesn't crack from being exposed to him, and I'm hoping we don't have to use it. But I just wanted to make sure everyone was in on the plan before even daring to put it into action."

"Alright… We'll leave her alone for another ten minutes, and then you'll go in, Reid." Hotch replied.

That was the end of the meeting.


	8. Chapter 8

The door opened and Hiroko looked up from the table; it was clear that she had not been expecting to see Reid walk into the room.

"Hey." He smiled at her and sat down at the table, directly across from her. "I think the last time I saw you was the day Aida broke up with me… How have you been?"

Her eyes were wide with shock, and her mouth hung just a tiny bit open. She was stiff, and her eyes didn't move from his face.

"I know you don't like having your hair down… You sure you don't want a hair tie or something?" He sighed when she said nothing, "Look, Aida wasn't the one who figured out you were the one doing these things. I was the one who figured it out, and I honestly am not surprised. I mean, you obviously hate her, so using those other girls as surrogates was the only way you could take it out without feeling any guilt. I get it."

Hiroko swallowed hard and looked him up and down.

"You look very much like you did back then… But your hair is shorter, and you look like you learned how to dress yourself properly." She said, avoiding saying anything that would incriminate or exonerate her, just like he had said she would. "Does it hurt you? Knowing you can't have my daughter?"

"I'll admit that it twinges a bit, but worse things have happened." He shrugged and leaned back in his chair. "So, I know why you did what you did, but why did you have to come all the way to Hawaii? You and Aida hadn't spoken, until today in that hotel room, since two days after she broke up with me; why did you travel all the way out here to do what you did?"

"Do you still love her?"

"Whether or not I love Aida has nothing to do with what we're talking about."

"Answer my question." She snapped, "I would love to let you get on with your job, but I need you to answer my question first."

"Did she say something to you while you two were alone?" He asked, "Is that why you're asking?"

"She said many things to me, and I said many to her, but that's irrelevant."

"She did." He began to drum his fingers on the table; it was an old habit that had always annoyed her. "Would it bother you if I did?"

"She loves you."

"I know." Her eyes went to his hands and he couldn't keep himself from cracking a smile as he saw her face contort from a stoic expression into an annoyed one. "I'm sorry, am I annoying you?"

"You have an eidetic memory, you tell me." She replied, picking at her cuticles and biting her lip, not moving her eyes from his hands.

On the outside, Aida stood with Hotch, Rossi, and Morgan, watching their interactions.

"I don't think your little plan is working; all they're doing is stalemating, trying to get the other to crack." Morgan said.

"Give it another couple of minutes. Let Spencer just sit there drumming his fingers on the table for a while longer; it was something he did sometimes when he was nervous and it pissed her off to no end. It infuriated her, she'll snap eventually. It was one of the few reasons she gave me for never allowing him over. _He always taps his fingers on the table and it makes me want to kill him_."

"She _is_ getting increasingly agitated." Rossi commented, eyes locked on Hiroko.

"If she's not shouting at him in five minutes, come get me." Aida replied, leaving them to go get some tea.

"Well, this should be interesting." Rossi looked after her as she walked away. "Reid denied ever having a girlfriend, and he said he hadn't ever been on a date before."

"He obviously wanted to forget about it, and given how much he resented her earlier in the week, he was torn up over what had happened and had some unresolved issues with her." Hotch replied.

"But he seems to have mostly gotten over it." Morgan replied, "It took Reid a while longer to get over his dad a few years back, but he seems to have gotten over it this morning. This is weird."

"I'm thinking part of those unresolved issues might be that he still has feelings for her." Rossi sighed and looked over at him.

"Fourteen years is a long time to carry that baggage around, though." Morgan said.

"Some people have baggage they've carried for even longer. You know that as well as anyone else, Morgan."

Five minutes later, Hiroko was having a snarky exchange with Reid but she wasn't giving anything up.

"Nothing?" Aida asked, setting her now-empty teacup down on a table nearby.

"Well, they've been having a sass war, but she's not saying anything that we can use to nail her." Morgan said, sighing. "You gonna go in?"

"Hopefully all those acting classes and that BFA pay off." She replied, popping a mint and opening the door.


	9. Chapter 9

Hiroko glared at Aida as she walked into the room, and she looked even more upset than she had when Reid had walked in.

"Hi, Mommy." Aida said, smiling at her. "You having a happy reunion with Spencer?"

"Happy and Spencer are two words that should never be in a sentence together unless strung like this: no, I am not happy to be anywhere near him." Hiroko replied.

Aida pulled a chair up and sat next to Reid, who was still drumming his fingers on the table; it had started to hurt, the metal table wasn't the most pleasant surface to drum one's fingers on, but he continued doing it anyway.

"BunBun~" Aida took Reid's hand and their fingers intertwined.

"Yes?" He asked, looking at her and trying not to make it obvious that he was actually enjoying holder her hand.

"After we're done with work, you wanna come over to my place for dinner and a movie?"

"I'd love to."

"Or do you want to just read? We can do that, too."

"How about both?"

Aida giggled and leaned in close to him.

"I'm going to kiss you, so brace yourself." She whispered in his ear.

He glanced over at Hiroko before Aida kissed his neck; he was alarmed by the sensation it gave him, but he did his best to maintain composure as she did it again, this time gently sucking before trailing more kisses up to his cheek.

"How can you be so obscene?! You're at work!" Hiroko barked.

"You know, you smell and taste pretty good, BunBun." Aida said, ignoring her mother and giving his cheek another kiss.

"Thanks?"

She turned his head toward her and kissed him; both of them felt their temperature rising, and Aida was blushing.

"You are so disgusting, you know that?" Hiroko said, addressing her daughter, "I wish Tsuki had lived instead of you."

"What's to say that if she had lived in my place that she wouldn't have been exactly like me?" Aida said, looking over at her mother. "Who knows, Tsuki might have ended up with Spencer, too."

"I would never have let her be with him in the first place."

"Last I checked, you didn't want her with me from the start, and that had no effect on our relationship for three years." Reid replied, shrugging and kissing Aida's cheek.

"I wish I could kill you two." Hiroko snarled. "Those girls let me kill you over and over, Aida. If only I could have found men as horrible as him to kill, so I could have killed him, too."

"BunBun, I think we can go home now." Aida said, playing with the collar of his shirt. She glanced down and stifled a laugh; Reid was embarrassed enough as it was, Aida laughing at the fact that he had been aroused by the kissing was just adding insult to injury. "I'll give you a few minutes to, uhm, cool off." She added, kissing him again before getting up and leaving.

His exit was delayed by about ten seconds, but he got out and immediately rushed into her office before anyone had a chance to say anything to him.

Hiroko was taken out of the room to be taken to the county jail, and Aida grinned at her as she was ushered past.

"Well, that certainly was unorthodox." Rossi said, turning and walking away.

"Get a little too hot for you, Aida?" Morgan asked, chuckling.

"I'm good; it was Pretty Boy who got a little too worked _up_, if you catch my drift." She replied, grinning wickedly before going to join Reid in her office.


	10. Chapter 10

"Your mom asked me, in the interrogation room, if I still loved you."

"And you brushed it off as an irrelevant question." Aida took his plate from him and went to the kitchen to do the dishes.

"Do you want to know the answer?" Spencer asked, watching her from the couch.

"I'm scared I won't like the answer." She called back over the sound of the running water.

She bit her lip and scrubbed the plates clean, trying to ignore the fact that Spencer had gotten up from the couch and now stood behind her. After the plates were spotless, she placed them in the dish drainer, washed her hands, and then turned to face him.

"You're not going to let me get away without hearing whatever terrible string of words that will be your answer to that question, are you?" She asked, so quietly they both nearly missed what she had said.

"Yep." He cautiously reached for her hand, which she didn't attempt to move.

"Spencer, you're a bit close." She muttered as their fingers intertwined and he took her other hand.

"Are you horribly opposed to it?" He asked.

"No, not really…" She looked down at their hands and sighed, "I love you, Spencer, but I don't think we should rush into our former relationship so quickly…"

It stung to hear Aida say that, but Spencer didn't allow himself to show that it had hurt him at all.

"While I understand that, I just really want to be with you again. And I know you want to be with me, too, so please don't act like you don't."

The last words seemed like they were laced with a hint of anger and fear, and Aida knew that if she were to insist on keeping her distance, it would bring about a permanent end to _them_. There would never again be an Aida and Spencer, not even as friends. He wouldn't be able to handle a second rejection.

"We are taking things slowly, Spencer. I'm not rushing back into this because I don't want either of us to get hurt. I love you, but please understand that for both of our sakes, we can't just jump right back into it. I hurt you, I feel horrible about it, and it will take time to rebuild what we had. I'm not saying no to being with you, I just want you to make sure this is something you're committed to."

"I am, and I'm not letting you walk away a second time." He said, pulling her out of the kitchen and into the living room.

He began to hum _When You're Smiling_ by Louis Armstrong, and Aida giggled as they began to dance; she had a love of older music, and she was glad that he had remembered that.

They danced and danced, singing old songs together and having a blast; it was just like when they were younger and it was just the two of them.

It was Aida and Spencer, and it was wonderful.


	11. Chapter 11

Things had been going well the past year; Spencer and Aida skyped all the time, and he got over his technophobia to be able to communicate with her. They wrote letters to each other every few days, too, so there was also a bit of an old fashioned tone to their correspondence, though Aida wanted to stick mostly with the technology because she was worried the letters would remind him too much of he and Maeve.

It did bother him, the letters, Maeve, Aida, but it didn't bother him enough to force him to stop out of pain. They had been taking things slowly, but Aida had visited him several times in Quantico, even coming to the field office and bringing goodies from Hawaii for the team each time she visited.

Reid sat at his desk and looked over everything on it; he had taken the time to organize his desk for once, and there were pictures of he and Aida in frames on it, and the book Maeve had given him sat in plain sight but unnoticed in a small file organizer on the desk alongside other books and files. Aida had gotten upset with him the last time they were together because he still carried the book with him everywhere, so he decided he'd leave it at work.

"Hey, Pretty Boy." Morgan said, rolling over next to Reid, "Whatcha thinking about?"

"I haven't heard from Aida in a while… She's never on Skype, she's not replying to my texts, and she hasn't written a letter in a month. I think she might still be mad at me about the book." Reid said, eyeing the spine of the book.

"Maybe writing letters and holding onto that book make her feel like you're still not over Maeve… It's been a couple years, and you've been with Aida for a year now. I know if Savanah was keeping gifts from an old boyfriend, I'd be a little worried." Morgan replied.

"I guess that makes sense…" Reid sighed. "Do you think I should get rid of the book?"

"I don't know, Reid. Only you can make that decision." Morgan pat his back and rolled back to his desk to finish a report he needed to turn in.

Reid's phone began to vibrate on the desk, and what he saw on the lock screen surprised him; _incoming call: Raccoon (Aida)_

"Hey!" He answered enthusiastically.

"Hello~!" She sounded cheerful, "Are you guys busy in the BAU right now?"

"No, not really. We're all just sitting around at our desks; nothing incredibly urgent has come up."

"Good." She hung up a second later, leaving Reid perplexed and Morgan wondering what the twenty second exchange had been about.

"Hey." Morgan snapped his fingers in Reid's face, and Reid came back to reality from his distant thoughts. "What happened?"

"She asked if we were busy here, I said no, and then she said _good_ and hung up." Reid glanced back to the book.

"Hey, you can't just run through here!" One of the other agents on the floor shouted, as a woman ran towards where Morgan and Reid were.

Both men spun around in their chairs and looked over to see what the commotion was; Aida was running as fast as she could over to them.

"Aida?" Reid got up out of his chair and reached her when she was about ¾ of the way across the room. The other agent had a gun pointed at her. "Whoa, whoa, hey!" Reid said, putting Aida behind him and putting his arms out in front of himself defensively, "What the hell are you doing?!"

"She broke past security and came up here, Dr. Reid!" The agent said, not lowering his weapon.

"Okay, but you don't need to point a gun at her! Or me, for that matter!" The other agent slowly lowered his gun after a long delay, "I'll take care of her, okay? You can go back to doing whatever you were doing before she got here." As soon as the agent turned away, Reid rolled his eyes and turned to Aida, "Are you okay?"

"I don't know, I-I think so, but I don't know." Aida replied; she was wearing pajamas and her hair was put up in a messy bun, her glasses were askew, and she looked panicked. She had also been crying.

Reid led her to the conference room and shut the door, at which point she began pacing around.

"What's wrong?" Reid asked, not sure what to make of her behavior; he'd never seen her act like that before.

"I… I had to leave Hawaii, and I have nowhere to go, and I'm being called in as a witness in my mom's murder trial, and I don't know what to do, Spencer! I'm terrified!" She began to cry and braced herself against the wall by the door.

"You left Hawaii when you're being called as a material witness?! That's illegal! They'll arrest you, you have to go back!"

"You think I don't know that?!" She covered her mouth and looked away from Reid; she felt horrible for yelling at him. Her hands dropped back to her sides and she took a second to try and compose herself, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell at you, but I can't do this. I can't testify, and I can't go back. You have to help me, BunBun."

She picked at her cuticles and he thought about what he could do to help her. After a few minutes, he decided there really wasn't much he could do.

"I'll go with you, okay? I'll stay with you until it's over, and then you can come back here with me." He said, sighing and taking her hands in his. "I can't allow you to not go because I'm a federal agent, but I also don't want to watch you suffering because you're my girlfriend and I love you. So, as a compromise, you won't break the law and I'll be there with you, okay?"

She shook him off and then hugged him tightly, knocking the wind out of him and thanking him profusely in several different languages.

Two hours later, they were in a cab to the airport to catch the next string of flights back to Honolulu.


	12. Chapter 12

Upon landing in Honolulu, their first stop was her house. She seemed extremely paranoid, though she was managing to shut Spencer out of her mind quite well. Despite being scared seemingly beyond all reason, she always avoided Spencer's questions skillfully and turned conversation to topics that had nothing to do with herself, her mother, or the upcoming trial.

The third day of his stay, Spencer found her playing her cello at 3:00am; it wouldn't have been a cause for concern if it weren't for the fact that she had locked both her bedroom door and the door connecting to the room Spencer had stayed in during the case.

"Aida!" Spencer struggled with the doorknob before bending down to look at the bottom of the door.

It was jammed with a fleece blanket, making it impossible to see into the room. He went into the other bedroom and looked under that door too but was again greeted with a blanket shoved under to jam the door and block the view into the room. He went outside and looked up to the second floor; the bedroom curtains were drawn, the lights were off.

He ran back inside, up the stairs, and kicked the door in; what he saw horrified him.

Four small prescription bottles were lying empty in the cello case on the floor, a half-empty vial of something too familiar to him was also in the case, next to a used syringe, and Aida put her cello down on the bed as he grabbed the bottles and the syringe to examine what she had just taken.

"Bupropion, Oxycodone, Risperidone…" Aida muttered, putting the endpin in and sighing. She fell off her chair onto the floor and blacked out.

Everything that happened after her naming three of the four medications she had taken was a blur for Spencer; he remembered bits and pieces of what happened, but the gist of it was that he had called an ambulance, and then they were at the hospital and she was being wheeled away while security was struggling to hold him back and talk him down from an emotional outburst that was very unlike him.


	13. Chapter 13

Spencer felt sick, so sick he couldn't open is eyes and had a splitting migraine. He wanted to vomit, the room felt like it was spinning, and time had seemingly frozen. He hadn't felt that bad even when Maeve had been murdered right in front of him. All he had done was go downstairs to get some tea and read a book, and all of five minutes later when he realized he had forgotten the book in her room, she was downing pills and shooting up.

He had been sitting in the waiting room for hours, no one would tell him how Aida was doing, and he felt a distant craving for something he had turned his back on years earlier. He summoned the strength to get up and head to the bathroom, walking through the hospital in a misery-fueled walk of shame.

He reached the bathroom, put his bag on the counter, and pulled out the vial that had been in the cello case, along with an unused syringe that had been hidden inside of her nightstand. A printed white label on the vile read _dilaudid_, and Spencer felt himself gripping the bottle so tightly it'd probably break if he held on any tighter…

He drew some of the liquid into the syringe and pushed the air bubbles out of it, looking at the liquid inside with a mixed cocktail of fear, contempt, and mighty need. Dilaudid had never done much good for Spencer; he became addicted after being held captive by Tobias Hankel, who had drugged him with it, and he had been off the stuff for a long time. It may have temporarily taken away his pain, but it didn't do any good for him, or those around him.

As he stared at the vial, he wondered if it was _really_ worth putting that needle into his arm and taking the drug again. He knew it was stupid, he knew that nothing good would come of it, but then he had a thought; a nasty little nagging thought.

_If anything happens, I'm in a hospital. And besides, why not?_

He touched the tip of the needle to his arm, but before he could put the evil thing with the evil liquid into his body, he snapped out of his stupidity and emptied the needle's contents into the sink and tossed the vial in the trash.

He left the bathroom after washing his face off and found a needle disposal bin and tossed the needle into it before heading back to the waiting room.

He called JJ, who was out getting coffee for the rest of the team, and explained what had happened. He began to sob while he was speaking to her. He hadn't cried at all up until the moment when he said to JJ _Aida tried to kill herself and I wish I was in her place_. JJ said she'd call him back soon, so he let her hang up.

"Dr. Reid?" A small, slender young woman who looked a lot like Hana but was too short to be looked over at him as he sat in a chair alone in the waiting room and rubbing his eyes. He looked over and she smiled a small, sympathetic smile. "Aida is awake now, and she's in great condition considering what she did to herself. She wants to see you."

He felt only a miniscule amount of relief, knowing she was okay. It had been nine hours since he called the ambulance, and no one had told him a single thing that whole time. She had died and been revived twice just in the ambulance, so he couldn't imagine what had happened inside the hospital.

The nurse led him to the room, and Aida was sitting up in bed and she looked a bit pale but not bad for what she had put herself through.

"BunBun!" She exclaimed enthusiastically, waving at Spencer as he walked into the room. He looked her over and her smile faded before she dropped her gaze; going from being happy to looking ashamed in a matter of seconds was one of Aida's many talents. "I'm sorry, BunBun."

"I'll leave you two to talk." The nurse said, stepping outside, "Hana says she'll be here to visit you in about twenty minutes, by the way." She added before shutting the door.

There was a long period of silence where Aida avoided making eye contact with Spencer and Spencer tried to stop himself from feeling angry with her.

"You want to tell me why you had a vial of dilaudid in your cello case and needles stashed in your nightstand? And maybe why you had a couple antipsychotic medications?"

"I'll start with the last part first… The antipsychotics and pain killers aren't mine, they're Hana's deceased mothers'. The bupropion is mine, I've been on it since shortly after we separated. As for the dilaudid, that also came from Hana. It was in the event that I wanted to overdose. I have never used the antipsychotics, the pain killers, or the dilaudid before." She looked over him and saw his hands were balled into fists. "At least I'm not, nor have I ever been, addicted to the stuff." She said. "You thought about taking what was left in the vile for yourself, didn't you?"

"Thought about it, didn't do it." He snarled, his jaw clenching. "Why did you take all of that shit? What the hell are you so afraid of that you'd want to kill yourself?" Their eyes met and he felt his blood boiling.

She couldn't break eye contact, it was almost as if something about the simultaneously enraged and devastated look in his eyes made it impossible to look away. She took a deep breath and bit her lip, thinking about how to answer him.

"Mom escaped from prison and has already killed five people. She's on a spree, Spencer, and I thought that maybe if I was dead she would stop and you could leave without anything happening to you."

"So you wanted to kill yourself to help me out by making me a fucking wreck?" He was angry, so much so that he didn't even try to wrap his head around the idea that she had tried to kill herself for his benefit; hell, there was _nothing_ about that that was at all beneficial to him. "I'm sorry, but what the _fuck_ were you thinking?!"

"I'm sorry, okay! I know I shouldn't have done what I did, and I honestly didn't even want you to come with me! I wanted you to find some way to get them to drop me as a witness so I could stay in Quantico with you, way the hell away from here, and then everything would have been okay. But, of course, I knew you wouldn't do that so now we're here. I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, but please don't yell at me!"

"I was worried sick about you! Nine hours I went without a single word about how you were doing, and you _died_! At least twice, because I'm not sure if you kicked the bucket a few times in here or not, but in the ambulance you were dead twice; I don't think I've ever gone through so many emotions in the span of a day before now, and you can't really blame me for being pissed off with you."

"I don't blame you! I know this is my fault, but could you please just stop yelling at me?" She gave him a pleading look, and he bit his tongue; there was no point in them arguing with each other or yelling back and forth. "Call your team, let them know about my mother, and when Hana gets here she will take you back to the field office where you will be safe. I'm not leaving you without protection. I'm physically incapable of protecting you if mom comes here."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"The hospital won't discharge me. I may be stable and surprisingly healthy considering the trauma I put my body through, but I'm in no condition to even get out of bed, let alone take down an UnSub if it comes to that."

"I'll call the team, but I'm not going anywhere."

"BunBun—"

"Am I still your proxy?" He asked. "I know that on your eighteenth birthday you named me as your proxy for the power of attorney for medical care and finances; am I still your proxy?"

"I haven't changed it since, so yes." She understood where he was going with that train of thought. "You're going to sign me out of the hospital, aren't you?"

"How long are you supposed to stay?"

"Until this evening for observation." She sighed, looked away, and waved her hand dismissively at him, "Do as you wish, Spencer. You're carrying me from the car into the field office, though."

"Fine."

With that, he left to check her out and call his team and update them on what had happened overnight.


	14. Chapter 14

Hana arrived at the hospital fifteen minutes after Spencer had left to call his team, and Aida was doing considerably better, though she couldn't stand on her own and felt tired.

"Are you guys alright?" Hana asked the two of them as she came into the room.

"Yes, we're fine." Aida replied, smiling a small smile at Hana. "You didn't have to come, you know."

"I did, though! Your father is at the field office waiting for you both, and JJ called me to say the team was already on their way over and would be here as soon as they could. They started over when Dr. Reid called her the first time a few hours ago…" Hana sighed, "Chika said you're doing pretty good, all things considered."

"I'm fine. I want you to keep an eye on him, though." Aida looked over to Spencer, who rolled his eyes at her.

"I don't need a babysitter."

"You were going to take the dilaudid, so yes you _do_ need a babysitter!" She snapped, getting out of the bed.

"Aida, please sit down!" Hana said, rushing to the other side of the bed to aid her.

Aida shook Hana off and very slowly made her way over to Spencer, who was standing halfway across the room.

"If you so much as _think_ about using it, I will hurt you so badly that not even the dilaudid could take the pain away, do you understand?" Aida said, falling into his arms.

"Got it." Spencer muttered, bracing her against himself while she caught her breath. "You really shouldn't be trying to walk around."

"Oh, shut up…" She panted, clinging to the front of his shirt.

An hour and a half later, after a long debate with the hospital staff and doctors, Aida was released into Spencer's care, and they headed to the field office. When they arrived, they were greeted by Aida's father, the rest of her team, and several HPD officers.


End file.
